Garden professionals will tell you to have a written plan for your gardens. My plan was written in my head. Not really a good place to keep it for the risk of losing your mind in the building process is high. Non-the less, in my mind the plan remained as I forged ahead.

I had created written garden plans for previous gardens and I endorse the professional’s advice. My formal rose gardens in Vancouver turned out beautiful.

I didn’t have the resources to hire a garden designer and I had already purchased the roses so I couldn’t use the free service that a lot of nurseries offer with purchase of your plants from their establishment. My drafting pencil to graph paper skill level is not good and it is near impossible for me to translate a garden from my mind to geometrics on a piece of paper. Instead I purchased a drop and click computer program that enabled me to take a picture of my empty plot and create drifts of color with virtual roses.

The woodland, on the other hand, was not a bare plot. The garden was really already there planted by Mother Nature herself. With no one to tend her garden it had fallen into disarray. Trees had toppled over. Limbs and branches left from winter storms had littered the garden’s floor. Wild blackberry vines entangled ferns and wild flowers and reached out with thorny fingers to grab my feet, arms and legs as I hiked trying to get a lay of the land. It was here that I would partner with nature and create my woodland retreat. The low land near the creek would remain in its native habitat for the preservation of the deer, elk bear and other wildlife that feast on the berries and find shelter in the tall grass. Note to self, fence the upper gardens.

You can view the rose garden in Vancouver and follow their journey to Kalama in my album entitled "He Promised Me a Rose Garden"